With the advent of the Internet and the prevalent use of electronic systems, increased attention has been paid to protecting the interests of content owners and to ensuring that the integrity of electronic transactions is not compromised. These are difficult tasks, however, as the differences between electronic systems and their physical counterparts can have a profound effect on the feasibility of such protections and the ease with which they can be implemented.
While increasing attention has been paid to the development of systems that address these problems, these systems often lack interoperability with other such systems, are overly complex, and/or place an unduly large burden on a relatively small number of entities to provide the bulk of the system's security and functionality.
Systems and methods are thus needed for providing content creators, application developers, consumers, and regulators with increased power and flexibility to define and create efficient markets for the exchange, control, and protection of digital goods and for the performance of electronic transactions.